


They Call Me

by brutti_ma_buoni



Category: Alex Verus Series - Benedict Jacka
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 14:55:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8849323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brutti_ma_buoni/pseuds/brutti_ma_buoni
Summary: Verus has been alone for a long time. Which is fine. Totally fine.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sprl1199](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sprl1199/gifts).



They call me Verus.

Okay, no, mostly they don’t. Most people call me Alex, because most people aren’t mages and tend to fail to spell Verus if you try to tell them it’s your name. 

I don’t use my old name. Of course. Sometimes, I almost forget I had a surname. Mages don’t as a rule. We don’t need our families any more. And, usually, our families don’t want us. So that works out nicely. 

Actually, most people don’t call me Alex, because most people don’t call me anything. That Guy In That Shop, I imagine, is what most of them label me mentally if they need to label me anything. The bloke at the till. Him, with the weird magic stuff he pretends is real, and him that doesn’t carry gag gifts and was a bit snotty when we asked for them, actually. 

Well, we go by many labels, and those are mine now. 

I spent so much time going for bigger names, you see, and that worked out extremely badly for me. Modest names seem like a better bet than past grandeur. Verus, of course. It means truth, and is just exactly the kind of name an adolescent on the dark side might think a diviner should be called. Latin, and aspirational. Richard used to laugh at it, but then someone who calls himself dragon should be realistic about people’s weird naming preferences. 

I didn’t just want to be Verus, back then. I had all these ideas about becoming Richard’s Chosen. Verus the Chosen. The heir to Drakh, you see? I wanted all of that, and I wanted it to mean something. 

Didn’t work out so well, since you ask. Hence my shop, which is no one’s idea of prime, but whose rent will rise above my means if business doesn’t pick up or I don’t luck into the kind of situation where divination can be monetised. (Chance would, as they say, be a fine thing. And it will. When chance is that fine thing, I’ll manage. Got to love a mage.) For now, it suits me to be in the background of the background. Take me for a joke shop if you will (not for long, that gets irritating). Do not take me for a renegade apprentice of what I now know is one of the scariest dark mages the UK has seen in decades. I’d really rather not be known for that.

What I’m saying is- What I’m trying not to say is-

It’s been a long time since I had a friend, is the thing. A very long time. What happened with Richard and the others? Didn’t really inspire much confidence in my ability to help others. Or to deserve it. 

Which is why it’s odd that she is here, and I’m not sending her away. 

Her name is Luna. Really Luna, she doesn’t have a mage name. She’s not a mage, even, or an apprentice. She’s an adept, but only because of a curse. Hell of a curse, mind you. Amazing. When we first met, I tried to see it, and then realised I was looking too hard. Luna’s curse isn’t just around her, it is her, when I look at her. They’re indivisible. 

I’ve never told her that. She probably guesses, though. Luna’s not one for sugar-coating, especially when it comes down to how crappy her curse is. 

The first time I saw her, she was lurking at the front of my shop. Hiding out, really. Not from me, for sure, but she looked scared and I couldn’t work out what the problem was till I checked what would happen if I walked out the door and had spotted the gang of irritating kids jostling up against people who’d turned the wrong way from Camden Market. Picking pockets? Maybe. But mostly just enjoying giving people a little aggravation. 

There were two other people in the shop when I first saw Luna, but one lost interest and left while the other was buying far too many candles for anyone to mistake him for a mage himself. So then it was just me and this girl, this girl who is Luna, but who wasn’t anyone much to me at that point. 

“You okay?” I said. She shrugged, not looking especially upset. I checked the futures, seeing no violence coming for her. But something was keeping her in my shop, and I didn’t quite understand it. I looked around the emptiness of my unsuccessful business, and said, “I can close up. You know, if you need help getting out of here.” I nodded towards the street, showing I’d spotted the most likely source of her fear. 

The irritating kids know me, and don’t bother hassling me much. I could escort someone through them without any sense of danger. (The odd catcall about wizards, definitely, but if I minded being called Harry Potter I wouldn’t be hiding in plain sight the way I do.) 

The girl shook her head, hunching inwards. Like she didn’t want to be touched, I realised, and suddenly I started to wonder if this was a worse thing than some shouty kids driving her off the street. I held up my hands, and kept my distance. “Hey, it’s okay. I just- You look like things aren’t okay with you. Or, you can just sit here a while, if you want. That’s fine. I’m not selling a lot of crystal balls today.”

I think that was the first time Luna looked around the shop and realised what it was. She didn’t just look at the popular stuff at the front. I saw her zero in on the other spaces, the ones with objects of some power. So I knew from the start she was one of us. That wasn’t common. But it was okay. I shrugged in my turn. “Is it a magic problem? Because I might be able to help, there.”

“No,” she said, the first word she said to me. “No one can help me.” It was quite calm, for such a sad, sad statement. I think that’s when I knew we could be friends. Something about knowing life can be hell, and just getting on with it. That’s very familiar to me. 

I checked my watch. An hour till closing. “Well, you’re welcome to stay. But if you tell me what the problem is-“

She swallowed. “I’m cursed,” she said, and then looked surprised, like that’s not something she often said aloud. “I’m a killer. If you touch me- If those kids touch me- I can’t go out there till they’ve gone. They’re a pain, but they don’t deserve my curse.”

It was still calm, and despairing, and I grasped then that that was the essence of Luna. She had no hope, but she was keeping on. I don’t mind being a renegade and an outcast. Not much. But I wouldn’t recommend it. There was such a moment of fellow-feeling, of recognising Luna’s pain, I could hardly stand it. And we have social reflexes for a reason. “Cup of tea?” I offered. “I can put it down on the table, if you’d like one. Since you’ll be around for a bit.” 

The unknown girl who was going to be Luna smiled at me. “That’d be nice,” she said. All that despair rolling away, like she’d never shown me her torment. “I’m Luna, by the way,” she said. “If we’re going to have a cuppa, you probably should know my name.”

I didn’t hesitate. “Call me Alex,” I said. 

And she did. I never really did need an assistant in the shop. There’s nowhere near enough business to warrant it, and I can just close the place when I need. But Luna needed something to live for. And I needed someone to call me Alex. So it’s working out nicely.


End file.
